Thursday, July 27, 2017

Russian ‘Federalism’ is to Federalism what ‘Military Music is to Music’

Paul
Goble

Staunton, July 27 – In 1970, Robert
Sherill published a harsh critique of the US military’s justice system under
the title Military Justice is to Justice
What Military Music is to Music. Now, after Vladimir Putin has refused to
extend the power-sharing accord with Kazan, one can say that Russian federalism
has even less connection to genuine federalism.

That is, some of the same words and
music are used to describe it, but the content and meaning are entirely
different, something many in Russia’s regions and republics are horrified by
but that that Russian centralizers are now celebrating because they want all
decisions to be made by Moscow officials rather than by Russians and
non-Russians beyond the ring road.

On Monday, the ten-year extension of
the Moscow-Kazan power-sharing accord ran out. Tatarstan officials called for
its renewal, but the Kremlin ignored their request, except to have Putin
declare that it was constitutionally wrong to require Russian speakers in
republics to learn the titular language, something that accord had enshrined
and that Russian courts had accepted.

In an article celebrating the end of
the power-sharing agreement, Svobodnaya pressa commentator Aleksey Polubota and
those Moscow commentators with whom he spoke declared that Russia as a result
had “finally overcome a dangerous inheritance from the Yeltsin era in
nationality policy” (svpressa.ru/politic/article/177600/).

The writer quoted Russian
nationalist publicist Yegor Kholmogorov as saying that as a result, “Russia had
formally been transformed into a single state without treaty elements in its
federal structure” and this represented “of course, only the first step to a
genuinely united Russia” (business-gazeta.ru/article/352344).

Polubota
asked two other Moscow writers what the end of the power-sharing accord means
and what is likely to happen next.Mikhail Remizov, president of the Institute for National Strategy, said
that he welcomed the end of the accord because it would allow Moscow to end the
discrimination Russians and Russian speakers now experience in non-Russian
areas.

But
Remizov continued, it highlights something else even more significant: “Our
country,” he remarked, “is a constitutional federation and not a treaty one. That
is, from the outset, Russia was not a country created by various territories
which agreed that now we will exist together, each on its own basis”

Rather,
“the logic was just the reverse: from the outset, a single unitary country
formed various subjects of the federation.” That principle must be maintained, and in that
regard, “the special agreement with Tatarstan was an unnecessary and even
dangerous exception” that has now been eliminated.

“In
the early 1990s, the constitutional disintegration of Russia took place in
which dozens of the subjects of the federation sought to obtain for themselves
special conditions from the federal center.” That must not continue. Russian
speakers in the republics must not be compelled to learn non-Russian languages,
and republics must not be allowed to have presidents.

On
those issues, there can’t be any compromise, Remizov said.All regions must be the same in terms of law
and practice, and then all can be strengthened so as to strengthen the
country.Their “strengthening,” including
a nod toward “budgetary federalism,” he added, “corresponds to the interests of
the country as a whole.”

Now
that the Moscow-Kazan treaty is a thing of the past, he argued, “we must first
of all move toward the equalization of the status of regions.” That won’t ever
be completely achieved, but Remizov suggested that what is sometimes called
Russia’s “excessive centralization” is “a means of compensating for the
inequality of the regions.”

Eliminate
the one and the other will be eliminated as well, he implied.

Toward
that end, Remizov argued, “the administrative borders in Russia” should be
redrawn to correspond with socio-economic needs rather than “on an ethnic
basis.” That will mean fewer federal subjects but more effective ones.
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of work to be done on that and no one is
yet focused on it.

A
second researcher with whom Polubota spoke was Oleg Nemensky of Moscow’s
Russian Institute for Strategic Research. Noting that the power-sharing accord
didn’t contain much of importance, he argued that nonetheless it was “a very
serious threat to the unity of Russia.”

Even
without the accord, however, “the danger of the disintegration of Russia has
not disappeared, although it has been reduced.” Consequently, further steps
must be taken and soon to “form relations between the center and the regions
which will block the development of centrifugal forces” that could emerge in a “political
or economic crisis.”

To
that end, Nemensky continued, “the federal center must increase the number of
levers with the help of which it will be possible to influence the situation of
inter-ethnic relations in all the republics and oblasts of Russia.” Moreover,
Moscow must work to ensure that laws in all are “unified to the maximum degree
possible.”

“This
is particularly important in national republics where ethnic Russians are the
majority but where representatives of the titular nationality are more heavily
represented in government, in business and so on.” There now must be “special
laws” about national minorities wherever they live.

As
of now, the paper says, “plans for the deconstruction of [the Tatar] nation”
are still those of “marginal figures.”But it warns that no one can tell how long it will be before such ideas
become centerpieces of Moscow’s policy.